Medics raise alarm over rise in eye diseases over 2 years

Eye specialists have seen an unprecedented increase in eye ailments over the past two years. They link the blinding situation to the heightened use of light-emitting electronic gadgets.

As World Sight Week comes to an end this weekend, the experts are saying the number of Kenyans, especially young people, who could be walking blind soon is increasing.

Currently, data from the Ministry of Health shows there are eight million people ailing from blinding eye diseases, yet only two million can access healthcare. This means that six million are left out.

Michael Gichangi, who heads the Ophthalmology Division at the Ministry of Health, said this is concerning and can be attributed to the high concentration of specialists in cities and towns.

Far-flung areas

“The challenges could be that most of the people come from far-flung areas where specialists are not interested to work in. We, therefore, need to address workforce needs,” he said, pointing out that Kenya has about 160 eye specialists, but most of them are distributed within cities and not more than 200km.

This is against the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) recommendation of 1 ophthalmologist to a ratio of 250,000 people.

“We want that ratio to be distributed equally in all counties,” he said.

Dr Gichangi added that in Tharaka Nithi County, for instance, an estimated 100,000 people are not attended to because there are only two ophthalmologists against a population of 350,000. “And in a county like Marsabit, there is not a single eye care specialist. So that’s a huge deficit,” he said.

About 60 per cent of ophthalmologists are concentrated in Nairobi, Kiambu and peripheral counties. Gichangi said these specialists need to be redistributed. He said there is a need for three or four times more ophthalmologists in the country to address the rising burden of eye care.

However, he said, the government has managed to bring down the numbers of some of the eye diseases such as trachoma by 20 per cent and targets to eliminate it in the next two years.

“For instance, for childhood cancers such as retinoblastoma, the survival rate was about 25 per cent a few years ago, meaning that out of 10, only one survived. But today, we are saying that three will survive,” he noted.

But these milestones are being hampered by lifestyle changes, with increased use by the populace of light-emitting electronic gadgets.

These include computers, high-light content television sets, and mobile phones.

“In the past few years, due to the transition to the online concentration of activities such as learning and meetings, we have seen a huge group of young people who now struggle to see a blackboard from as near as 10 centimetres away,” he said, calling for urgent, remedial measures.

He linked this to the Covid-19 pandemic which pushed many work and social activities to online platforms.

Albert Masua, a cataract surgeon at the Kenya Society for the Blind, and Emily Moraa, an eye specialist at Kenyatta National Hospital (KNH), weighed in on this matter, saying the increased use of electronic gadgets is robbing the country of a productive age population.

Dangers of blue light

“We don’t know if, in the next 20 to 30 years, we will call it age-related macular degeneration, glaucoma, cataract, diabetic retinopathy or something else,” Masua said. He revealed that blue light emitted by most machines, such as computers, phones and television sets, is slowly affecting a huge population of the youth.

“Since the Covid-19 pandemic, we have turned most of our activities to the internet, using computers. Even schooling has become an e-learning activity.

“So, we are getting a little bit more complaints of people with symptoms that are more or less caused by exposure to blue light,” he added.

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